Slack patches Windows app bug that could've been used for spying

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A safety researcher has exposed a flaw in Slack that would’ve been exploited to scouse borrow information over the trade messaging app and probably unfold malware.

The flaw comes to Slack’s Home windows desktop app, and the way it can routinely ship downloaded information to a definite vacation spot—whether or not it’s to your PC or to a web-based garage server. You’ll be able to set a obtain location within the app’s personal tastes segment. Alternatively, David Wells, a researcher on the safety company Tenable, spotted there is otherwise to configure the choice: By the use of a different hyperlink.

“Crafting a hyperlink like ‘slack://settings/?replace=’ would exchange the default obtain location if clicked,” Wells wrote in a weblog submit at the vulnerability.

Wells learned the similar serve as might be abused. Believe a hacker the use of the hyperlinks to secretly reconfigure a Slack desktop app to ship all downloaded information to an outdoor server. “The usage of this assault vector, an insider may exploit this vulnerability for company espionage, manipulation, or to achieve get admission to to paperwork outdoor in their purview,” Smartly’s safety company Tenable mentioned in a separate document.

Symbol: david wells / medium / screenshot

The vulnerability too can pave the best way for possible malware infections. Any downloaded information despatched to the hacker-controller server may also be altered and booby-trapped to incorporate malicious code. The assault will begin as soon as the sufferer opens the report at the Slack desktop app.

The principle impediment of wearing out this assault is circulating the hacker-created hyperlinks to other people on Slack, which helps to keep its channels non-public to paying shoppers and their firms. To tug this off, Wells spotted how Slack channels may also be configured to subscribe to RSS feeds, together with threads on Reddit.

“I may make a submit to a very talked-about Reddit group that Slack customers world wide are subscribed to,” Wells mentioned. The hacker-created hyperlink will then populate throughout the Slack channel and most likely draw in some clicks.

“This method might be unmasked by way of savvy Slack customers, then again if a long time of phishing campaigns have taught us the rest, it is that customers click on hyperlinks, and when leveraged via an untrusted RSS feed, the affect can get a lot more attention-grabbing,” he added.

Slack has patched the flaw in model three.four.zero of the Home windows desktop app. “We investigated and located no indication that this vulnerability was once ever applied, nor stories that our customers have been impacted,” the corporate mentioned in an e-mail.